Former FBI agent crypto theft plea spans 35 cases

A counterintelligence officer who was supposed to guard seized evidence has admitted raiding it. In a former FBI agent crypto theft case, Patrick Steven Yaroch, a 37-year-old from Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria to wire fraud and money laundering, the Justice Department said on November 5.

What happened

Prosecutors said Yaroch used his access to FBI systems that stored wallet credentials collected during investigations. Beginning no later than December 2024, he used credentials tied to 35 different cases to make roughly 100 fraudulent transfers, taking roughly $2,474,380 in total. Targets included wallets held by subjects of other probes, by nation-state actors and at least one wallet the bureau had set up for an operation.

He then converted the coins into other tokens and routed them through more hops to obscure their origin, using some of the money to pay credit cards, car payments and other loans. Yaroch worked in the Boston Division from 2017 to early 2025 and then, according to court records cited by Fox 5 DC, in the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division from February 2025 to July 2026.

The case has an unusual twist. According to prosecutors, he asked ChatGPT how to maximize investment returns and where to live in the EU, and after it suggested a vineyard in Portugal he hired Portuguese lawyers to obtain a tax number. He faces up to 20 years in prison, with sentencing set for March 4, 2027.

Why it matters

The plea agreement says the thefts compromised several investigations into criminal groups and foreign adversaries, as well as intelligence sources and methods. That is the deeper damage: seized and monitored wallets are tools for tracing laundering networks, and an insider moving funds can tip off targets.

The FBI agent crypto theft also raises custody questions for every agency now holding large digital asset balances. Private-key access inside government is as sensitive as hot-wallet access at an exchange, a point underlined by the Binance TraderTraitor attribution and by the Kraken EU theft earlier this month. Decrypt reported that Yaroch first self-reported in July, admitting to transfers worth less than $1 million, far below the figure in his plea. Two days later, a search of his home turned up a Trezor hardware wallet and three passports.

What's next

Sentencing in March will show how courts weigh insider abuse of seized crypto. For investigators, the FBI agent crypto theft is also a reminder that blockchain records cut both ways: the traceability that exposes criminals also documented roughly 100 transfers by one of the bureau's own. The case is also likely to draw scrutiny of how the bureau controls access to credentials gathered in its cases.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia published its announcement of the plea.